


Pinterest Wet Dream

by trash4ficsaboutlurv



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Fluff, Halloween, M/M, Mutual Pining, Resolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-12
Updated: 2016-10-12
Packaged: 2018-08-22 00:26:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8265988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trash4ficsaboutlurv/pseuds/trash4ficsaboutlurv
Summary: Sam comes over and helps Steve make Halloween treats and Steve finally figures out what Sam has been saying all along.





	

Steve's doorbell rang. 

He frowned and set his wooden spoon in the bowl of chocolate fudge pie filling. Natasha had said she might swing by after nine to help him make sugar cookies, but Steve had assumed she meant she'd swing by around ten to eat said sugar cookies before they could make it to Claire's Halloween party.  

Steve wiped his hands on his apron and walked to the door. Through the peephole, he saw Sam leaning against the opposite wall, his hands shoved in the pockets of his jacket, his beanie pulled down over his ears. Steve grinned. That beanie sported Sam's football team's insignia, and Sam only wore it on hopeless causes. His team must be playing the Thursday night game against some behemoth and Sam hadn't wanted to sit alone with his anxiety.  

"Hey, Sam," Steve said, as he opened the door. He tried (and probably failed) to pull his grin into something a little less ridiculously excited than a puppy. Although, to be fair, he hadn't seen Sam in two weeks. Fury had pulled Sam out on a mission in Nepal that 'didn't require the heavy-handed symbolism of a star-spangled man,' according to T'challa (who said it with his usual dignity, but -- as much as he _could_ sound like he was making fun of Steve -- had sounded like he was making fun of Steve.) And then Steve had been in Hawaii on an op and then when Sam and Steve were finally both in the same city again, Sam had had to talk one of his veterans off the ledge and had offered to stay with him (the veteran) until he felt okay being alone. Steve knew Sam had gone home last night, but he hadn't expected to see him tonight with Thursday Night Football on the schedule.  

"Sorry I didn't call," Sam said, pushing past Steve into his apartment. His shoulder grazed Steve's and it was like a spark of electricity. ( _Cliché_ _. Dumb. Stop.)_  

Sam tossed his keys on the stand by the door and shrugged out of his jacket. "I lost my phone in Nepal somewhere and T'challa gave me this fancy doo-hickey." Sam pulled a small, black earpiece out of his pocket. "But I couldn't tell you how to work it for love or money." He tossed it to Steve, who had time to wipe his chocolate-spattered hands on his apron, before plucking it neatly out of the air. He turned it over in his fingers. It was a seamless, flat circle that looked more like a small coat button than anything.  

"I told T'challa I was looking for Verizon, not some damn Wakandan show-off tech, but he didn't listen."  

Steve placed the earpiece in the bowl with Sam's keys. "Why aren't you watching the game?" he asked. 

Sam shrugged. "Missed you," he said simply. He did that. Said exactly what he meant in a way that took Steve's breath away.  

Steve grunted, which was his way of saying, 'Missed you too.' 

"I should have known you'd be cooking something. What's this?" Sam thumbed away something from Steve's chin.  

"Chocolate pie," Steve mumbled. 

Sam sucked the chocolate off his thumb and Steve had to fake a coughing fit to keep Sam from seeing what that did to him.  

Sam clapped him on the back and meandered toward the kitchen. "Do you need a taste tester, then?" 

"Are you avoiding watching the game?" Steve asked.  

"We're playing the Seahawks. No way we win. Didn't need to put myself through that." He tugged at his beanie again. 

"Wearing your good-luck hat though. All hope isn't lost." Steve followed behind Sam into the kitchen, which was littered with mixing bowls, cookie cut-out shapes, and dirty spoons.  

Sam peered into the bowl at the chocolate fudge pie filling and licked his lips. "Yeah, you know," he said absently. "Force of habit. You gonna let me try this?" 

Steve pulled the bowl off the counter away from Sam. "When it's baked. It has egg in it." 

Sam rolled his eyes. "Salmonella is a conspiracy of big government and you--" Here he poked Steve in the chest. "Are its frontman." 

Steve smiled. "You got me, Sam. You can taste it when it's baked, though. If Big Government knew I wasn't pushing the salmonella agenda, they'd pull the trigger on me."  

"We wouldn't want that," Sam said. He ambled over to the kitchen island, where a rack of cupcakes were cooling. "What are these?"  

"Red velvet. But I used black food coloring. So, I guess black velvet." 

Sam grinned and Steve knew what he was going to say before he did and said, "Shut up, Sam," as Sam said, "Just like me." 

Sam's eyes sparkled. "Is this all you've been doing since I've been gone. Baking?" 

Steve shook his head. "I did some other stuff." 

"Bucky mentioned an incident with a grenade." 

Steve wrinkled his nose. "Bucky is a tattle tale. And it's my job to fall on grenades." 

"It's your job to toss grenades into the sky where they can explode harmlessly. Or cover them with your shield. Not your body." 

"Did you come over to yell at me?" Steve asked.  

"Nah," Sam said.  "Call it a perk. I get to yell at Steve Rogers, hero of men." 

"Well, you can keep yelling, but I've gotta a chocolate crumble crust to make, so..." 

"Need help with it?" Sam offered.  

Steve handed him a rubber spatula and a mixing bowl of black icing. It was coffee buttercream with more black food coloring. "Ice the cupcakes. And you can have exactly one. I'm making a witch's hat with those and I only made a few extra." 

"How many's a few?" Sam asked, dipping his pinkie in the icing.  

Steve rolled his eyes and started throwing together the ingredients for his crust. Sam took a generous spoonful of icing but otherwise was content to spread buttercream on the cupcakes. Steve angled himself so he could look at Sam without looking like he was looking at him. Sam was wearing a long-sleeved white Henley and jeans, just an everyday normal outfit, but the fit was out of this world. The thickness of his thighs, the breadth of his shoulders, the lovely curve of his biceps. _People_ and _E!_ went on and on about how hot Thor was, but here was a human – not even a suped up human like Steve – just a regular human who put in his hours at the gym, who looked this perfect, this much like Ideal Beauty. 

"Do you not trust me?" Sam asked, looking over at Steve.  

"Trust you?" 

"You've been staring at me for at least a minute. I'm not the Cookie Monster, man. I can control myself." 

"I wasn—Sorry. I think I just zoned out." Steve could feel a hot blush creeping up on his cheeks, so he pretended like he needed something out of the refrigerator to cover his face.  

"Claire said it was only going to be a few of us at her apartment. Why so much dessert?"  

"The pie is for the VA. It's gonna be shaped like a haunted house. I was going to surprise you tomorrow." Steve was glad to still be in the fridge, so Sam couldn't see his face. 

"Well, don't I feel special," Sam said.  

"You kinda ruined the surprise though," Steve said, standing up.  

Sam shrugged. "I was never one for surprises anyway. But I've always liked pie."  

"I know," Steve said. "And chocolate's your favorite. Actually, sweet potato is your favorite, but only if your mama makes it. I thought it would be a little overboard to fly her up from Atlanta just to surprise you with pie tomorrow." Steve said this all in a rush, trying his damnedest not to be embarrassed. But the way Sam was looking at him – like he couldn't quite believe what Steve had just said – wasn't helping. "Not that I _actually_ thought about flying her up here," he clarified. "Halloween isn't really a fly-family-in holiday, right?" 

Sam was still looking at Steve with bewilderment in his eyes. But maybe it was affectionate bewilderment, a kind of 'you're adorable' bewilderment. ( _Wishful thinking, Steve. Wishful thinking._ )  

"Right," Sam finally said. "Save that for Christmas. New Years, if it's someone romantic." 

Steve blushed again. "You got someone romantic I need to fly up for New Year's," he asked.  

Sam rolled his eyes and went back to icing cupcakes. "Hurry up with the pie. I want to taste it before I check the score and die from humiliation." 

Steve bit his lip. He'd said something wrong. He was smart enough to know that. But not smart enough to figure out what and how to fix it. "It's going to be two pies in these square pans," he said. "When it's finished cooking, I'll cut turrets into it and towers. And you can have the leftover pie." 

"Cool," Sam said, smiling. "What are the licorice and marshmallows for?" He pointed at the bag on the breakfast nook table.  

"I'm going to have marshmallow ghosts on pipe cleaners above the castle, and little bats made from the licorice." 

Sam wrinkled his nose. "The candy corn?" 

Steve laughed at Sam's face of disgust. Sam had made perfectly clear his feelings about candy corn on more than one occasion. With a lot of passion. "Mostly to rile you up," Steve admitted. "But they make really cute jack-o'-lantern teeth." 

"They make really cute trash, too," Sam grumbled. Steve chuckled. "Let me guess," Sam said, "you're turning the Oreos into gravestones." 

"That's a good idea," Steve admitted. "I was actually going to use them to distract Natasha from eating the sugar cookies I'm making." 

"Are you a Keebler elf?" Sam asked, laughing.  

"I don't actually know what that's a reference to," Steve admitted. "The cookies are for the trick-or-treaters in the building. I'm going to put them in little Halloween plastic baggies. Everybody always gives out candy. Thought I'd do something different." 

Sam smiled. "Sometimes it's hard to believe I'm not just making you up in my head," he murmured. His eyes raked across Steve's face to his flour dusted, apron covered chest, down to his pumpkin-and-bat-covered socks and then back up to his face. And for Steve, it felt like an actual caress of heat. Like a self-contained blast of oven breath going up and down the length of his body. Or maybe that was just the blush spreading impossibly fast.  

"I have no idea what you're talking about," he said. He turned his back on Sam and started slapping pie filling into the crust. He knew his ears and neck were stop-sign-red, so hiding his face wasn't really doing a whole hell of a lot. But it was better than nothing.  

They worked in silence for a while. Steve put the pies in the oven and started throwing together cookie dough. Sam finished icing the cupcakes and came to sit on the counter right beside Steve.  

"You're gonna get flour on your jeans," Steve said. 

"I have a washer machine. So do you. If I couldn't bear to leave your house with flour on my pants." 

Steve bit his lip. 

"What's wrong?" Sam asked, like he wasn't literally cranking Steve like an old well pump. 

Steve sighed and looked up at Sam, deciding to be a little honest. "It feels like you're making fun of me, but I'm not smart enough to know exactly how." 

Sam frowned in confusion, wrinkled his nose, then laughed.  "Steve, I love you, but you are incredibly oblivious sometimes." 

Steve's heart stuttered on the first four words, and then deflated by the end of the sentence. It didn't matter that Sam said what he meant if Steve couldn't decipher it anyway.  

"I think you're confusing on purpose," he said, covering the cookie dough in foil and putting it in the refrigerator.  

Sam hopped off the counter. "I think we just haven't seen each other in two weeks and we're out of sync. It can happen to the best of friends." 

"Yeah," Steve said. There was that _making-fun-of-Steve_ tone again.  

Sam continued. "Remedies include suffering through a godawful football game together and catching each other up on what happened in the interim." 

"Well, Bucky already told you what happened on my end." 

"You jumped on a grenade then folded yourself into a closet until today?" Sam asked, his eyes twinkling.  

"No, I did some other stuff. Sharon and I were somehow _both_ third wheels on Bucky and Natasha's this-is-not-a-date movie night." 

Sam laughed. "Bucky didn't tell me about that." He tugged on the string of Steve's apron and pulled him toward the living room. "I'm going to put the game on silent, because I like to suffer and you're going to give me a play-by-play of Bucky and Nat's not-a-date." 

Steve allowed himself to be pulled into the living room. Sam even pushed Steve's shoulders down to indicate he should sit. Steve could feel the warmth of Sam's hands through his t-shirt and he thought about resisting just to get Sam to keep touching him. ( _Pathetic. Really quite sad, actually. An embarrassment.)_  

He dropped onto his black leather couch with a thwack and watched as Sam rummaged in the basket under his coffee table for the TV remote. Sam turned to the right channel and sat down beside Steve.  

"I don't have the heart to look at the score," he admitted, looking at Steve instead. "What is it?" 

Steve peered at the numbers at the bottom of the screen. "17-10, you guys." 

Sam whipped his head toward the television and his face split into the widest grin Steve had ever seen on his face. "It's still the third quarter," he said, beaming like a crazy person. "We're still gonna lose." 

Steve patted his leg. "We can watch if you want." 

Sam shook his head. "We're supposed to be getting back in syn--" He trailed off as he watched one of his running backs break a tackle and hop over a defender on the ground. The guy blazed down the sideline, the announcer screaming his progress, before a linebacker tackled him to the ground from behind. "Maybe we'll just finish this quarter," Sam amended.  

Steve smiled. He didn't mind watching a sport he couldn't less about, not when Sam was practically vibrating with energy and shaking Steve's arm any time anything happened on screen. Steve kept about 85% of his mind on this – sitting on the sofa with Sam – and 15% spread between trying to understand what the heck was going on in the game and listening for the timer in the kitchen.  

"The red zone defense is too good," Sam muttered mostly to himself. "They can't do it. They can't do it. They---oh shit! They did it. Hell yeah!. Because we're just that damn good!" He smacked Steve's arm a couple times before he realized what he was doing. He smiled and laid a swift kiss on Steve's bicep in apology. It was the sort of thing you might see a well-established couple do. The intimacy tied up with it's casualness, as though they took for granted that they could kiss each other any time they wanted.  

Sam seemed to realize what he had done at the same moment that Steve burst into flames. "Pie," Steve blurted out and hurled himself toward the kitchen with preternatural speed.  

He waited until he was out of sight of Sam to grab his arm. He knew logically that his arm wasn't the center of a cosmic storm, but tell his nerve endings that. Sam had kissed him _(just your arm, you idiot)_ _._ Like it was nothing. Because maybe to him it was nothing. Steve was being stupid. Sam did weird shit over his football team all the time. He never washed one of his jerseys because he said if he washed it, his team would lose their next seven games. He had broken down in tears when his team won a playoff game against their division rivals. Last year, he hadn't gone home for Thanksgiving because his brother rooted for the Cowboys and their teams were playing each other in prime time, and Sam hadn't wanted to start any drama. As if the game mattered more than seeing his family during the holidays. Kissing Steve's arm – a cursory, glancing, mom-kissing-kid's boo-boo sort of kiss, honestly – didn't even break the top five weird things Sam had done in the name of his football team's success. So why did Steve's arm feel like it was going to fall out of the socket? Why did Steve want to go back in there and return the kiss. 

Steve sighed and took the pies out of the oven. It was a minute earlier than the timer, but he needed to busy his hands ASAP. Or his mind would really start digging into his dumb pining of the last year and a half and that was not a road he wanted to go down right now. ( _Sad. Desperate. Loser. Incapable of charming another human being.)_ He set the pans on the cooling rack and then pulled the cookie dough out of the fridge to put on a sheet pan. He rolled the dough out and used his little pumpkin cookie cutter to make shapes. If he was slower and more diligent about it, so what? Anything for the kiddies. After he had the cookies in the oven, he eased the pies out of their pans and set them on a long tray. With the concentration of an architect, he started to cut away angles and corners to create his haunted house. He put all the shaved off bits in a bowl.  

"Powdered sugar will make it look textured," Sam said. 

Steve jumped and crushed a cookie he was trying to set as a window into crumbs.  

"I didn't mean to scare you," Sam apologized. "Cookie crumbs add texture too though."  

Steve looked down at the crumb spray on the edge of the pie. He agreed. "Thanks." 

"Seahawks QB just got hurt. Looks like we might win this one." 

"Good for you," Steve said, then winced because it was hard to make that phrase sound sincere, even when it was.  

Sam didn't say, "What's the deal, man?"  which Steve really couldn't have blamed him for. He leaned against the counter and said, "I seem to recall a promise of leftover pie." 

Steve nodded. He went over to the silverware drawer and grabbed a fork. When he turned back, Sam had his eyes closed and his mouth open, like he was waiting to be fed.  

 _You have got to be kidding me,_  Steve thought as his dick jumped in his pants.  

He marched back over to Sam and pushed the fork into his hand. Sam opened his eyes and smirked. Smirked! Like he'd just won a bet. Steve's roiling inner tumult was turning decidedly toward annoyance. He didn't deserve this. He was happy to pine after Sam in peace, but he didn't deserve Sam being a fucking tease all night.  

"Pie's there," he said jerkily, jabbing his finger toward the discard bowl. 

He went back to decorating his castle, studiously ignoring Sam, who he could feel watching him and not going for the pie at all.  

"Aren't you gonna see if I like it?" Sam asked after about a minute. Steve could hear the laughter bubbling up around his words, like a babbling brook bubbles around raised stones.  

"You can tell me," Steve said. He twisted a licorice stick into a bow that looked nothing like a bat. 

"How will you know I'm not telling tales to stroke your--" and here Sam paused dangerously and Steve wanted nothing more than to be left to die. "Ego?" 

"Sam, eat the goddamn pie," Steve ordered, very much in his Captain America voice.  

He didn't have to look up to know Sam was wearing a very insouciant grin. Steve pretended to be absorbed in the exact placement of the next cookie, waiting for Sam to eat his pie and go watch his dumb football game. But Sam had a lot of patience for whatever the hell he was doing to Steve.  

Steve exhaled and turned to glare at Sam. "Are you just going to stare at me?" he asked.  

Sam smirked. "It's hard to get your attention, Steve." 

Steve sighed, hating how flustered Sam was making him and seemingly, without even trying all that hard. "I’m paying attention," he said. "Taste the pie, Sam." This time in a much gentler tone.  

Sam brought the fork to his lips and Steve eyes locked on his mouth like a homing missile. Sam placed the small bite of pie in his mouth and Steve let out a quiet breath as Sam's eyes fluttered closed and his lips parted around a long drawn out ooohhh that was so sexual, Steve couldn't believe he wasn't doing it on purpose.  

Steve was somewhere between punching Sam and making him moan for real.  

"I take it you like the pie," Steve said, his tone as detached and droll as he could manage in the circumstances.  

Sam licked the fork tines. "I'd definitely let you bring it to the cookout." 

Steve frowned. "What cookout?"  

Sam shook his head. "Nothing," he said, and again he sounded like he was making fun of Steve. 

"There's no more pie on that fork," he said. "You can stop licking it now." 

Sam smirked. "Aren't you full of orders tonight. _Eat the pie, Sam. Stop licking the fork, Sam._ What else should I do?" 

"Go watch your game?" Steve said, well aware of the question mark that tacked itself on to the end of what should have been an order.  

"I didn't really come over to watch the game. Like I said, I missed you." 

"I missed you too, bu--" 

"In fact, while I was over in Nepal with T'Challa and Ororo, I got to thinking that if I was ever going to have what they have, I was going to have to stop waiting for you to make a move because if I leave this up to you, we'll be doing this same stupid dance next Halloween." 

"Hmrmmrmm?" Steve squeaked.  

"Dying and coming back to life 70 years in the future is a lot. So is finding out that hostile aliens are out there. That SHIELD was Hydra. Getting into an epic no-holds-barred smackdown with your team. Breaking me and the others out of ocean jail. Being on the run until Fury and T'Challa exposed Ross for the conniving butthead he is. No time for romance in all that." Sam smiled. "But Nepal is a very good place to take a good hard look at your life. I think it's all the mindful quiet and shit. It's the quietest place I've ever been. I could practically hear the blood pushing around in my veins up there. That is, when Ororo and T'challa weren't being disgustingly in love. And I got to thinking about the games we've been playing. The will-they, won't they cliché. And I realized that my favorite part of those TV shows was when one of them just turned to the other and said, No games, no shit. I like you. So that's what I’m doing now, Steve. No games. No shit. I like you. A lot."   

Sam looked up at Steve, whose heart was running like an out-of-control chariot on three wheels.  

"So, now it's your turn," Sam continued, "to say, _What the fuck, Sam?_ Or more preferably, _Sorry it's taken me so long, Sam, but let's make sweet, sweet love right here on the kitchen floor._ " He grinned like he wasn't being as vulnerable as a armadillo without its shell on a Nascar race track.  

Steve licked his lips and cleared his throat. "Oh, ahh, um, sorry it's tak--" 

"Yo, where are the sugar cookies that were promised to me?" Natasha yelled from the front door she had just burst through. 

Sam recovered much faster than Steve and turned rather calmly to Natasha and said, "Hey Nat. Long time no see." And he didn't sound even remotely flustered or annoyed.  

"Cookies?" Nat said, walking into the kitchen and hopping up on the counter. A cloud of flour wafted up and over her black catsuit.  

"In the oven," Sam said. "Pie's good, Steve. I'm gonna go finish the game." 

"I have money on the Seahawks," Nat said.  

"Hope it wasn't a lot," Sam said. "They're down a score." He walked back into the living room while Steve tried to reestablish equilibrium. There was no moisture in his mouth, an odd ringing in his ear, and his chest felt hollow and ravaged by little drummer boys on the inside.  

"Haunted house pie?" Natasha said. "You are a Pinterest Wet Dream, aren't ya, Cap?" 

Steve tried to focus on Nat's words, but all he really caught was wet dream, which couldn't be right. "What?" he asked. 

"What's wrong? You look like you stared into the void and the void stared back." 

"Nat, can you stop talking in riddles for five seconds?" 

Natasha nudged his hip with the toe of her boot. "You alright?"  she asked. 

Steve nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine." 

"Don't tell me you had a lot of money on the game back there.  If Seattle loses, I'm out two hundred." 

"That's a lot of money," Steve chastised, finally back on solid ground.  

"In the 40s," Nat rejoined, "but good ole inflation says otherwise. How long for cookies?" 

"Twenty minutes," Steve said. "Go watch large men lose your money." 

"The chef is certainly grumpy tonight," Nat said, allowing herself to be shooed into the living room.  

Steve didn't let himself look over at Sam. He didn't know if he preferred Sam to be watching the game like he hadn't just dropped a bomb into Steve's lap or turned around on the sofa trying to make eye contact. At least it was clear now that Sam had been flirting and Steve was just too stupid to pick it up. No one had ever said he was good at that sort of stuff. In fact, Peggy had told him he was downright idiotic when it came to it.  Steve let out a long breath.  

"Fuck!" Sam shouted from the living room and Natasha laughed.  

"Pick six baby!" She yelled. "Might not lose my money after all." 

"There's four minutes left," Sam said. "We just gotta do a four minute drill and kick a field goal and we get out of this with a win." 

"But the Seattle defense is looking hungry," Natasha singsonged.  

Steve glanced over as Sam hit Natasha with a pillow. She laughed. "You and Steve are both grumpy tonight." 

Sam glanced back at Steve and Steve pretended like there was something small and fascinating on the ceiling above his head. Natasha looked between them, then frowned.  

She sighed. "Great, now I look like an asshole." She stood up. "All you had to say was I was third-wheeling." 

"No, you're--" 

"I'm just baking--" 

"I was watching the game!" 

Natasha rolled her eyes. "Just bring ten cookies to Claire's thing tomorrow and I won't hold this awkwardness over your heads." 

"You don't have to go," Steve said as Natasha gathered her coat off the back of the sofa.  

"Is that right, Sam?" Natasha asked, her eyes twinkling like candles in a pumpkin. "It's fine if I stay until the game is over, eating cookies, sitting between you and Steve." 

"Not my house," Sam said, his tone the very definition of neutral.  

Natasha made a 'told ya' face at Steve. "Right then, boys, I'm off. And I'll have you know, I thought it would take a little longer for Sam to lose his patience with you, Steve. Another bet lost." 

"The Seahawks haven't lost, yet," Sam said. 

"They will. Like you said, your team just has to eat up four minutes running the ball." Nat jammed her hat onto her head and walked to the door. "Night, boys. See you at Claire's." 

"Bye, Natasha," Steve said, feeling every bit as exhausted as if he had just been in a training room fighting her.  

She smiled like she could tell. 

When the door clicked shut, Sam didn't turn away from the game and Steve didn't stop fussing over his haunted house pie. But there were only so many ghosts, gravestones, and bats you could put on a pie and eventually he had to accept that he was finished. He took the cookies out, but they'd need to cool before he could put the orange frosting and sprinkles on, and it would be too much like stalling to just stand in the kitchen for the half an hour that would take.  

He took a deep breath and walked into the living room. Sam was hunched over a pillow, staring intently at the game. Steve sat beside him. There were forty seconds left in the game. Sam's team was at the twenty-two yard line on 2nd down and 4. Steve didn't know much about football, but he knew Sam shouldn't look this tense. Even the worst kicker in the league was going to make that field goal and they still had time to actually make it a touchdown.  

Steve watched Sam's jaw clench as the quarterback stepped back in the pocket to throw. He relaxed only when the receiver caught it and was tackled.  

"I don't know why they’re throwing," Sam said. "Could be intercepted. Just run the damn thing." 

"Someone could force a fumble," Steve pointed out. 

Sam looked up at him for half a second. "Yeah, you're right. I trust our wide receivers more than our running back. He's a rookie." 

Sam went tense again as the quarterback threw a screen pass to one of his receivers, who dodged a tackle, then another one and scrambled forward about eight yards. Sam sighed again. "I swear these last few seconds are going to give me an aneurysm." 

"You're gonna win," Steve said. Sam glanced at him again then back at the screen.  

He nodded. "We're gonna win." 

His knuckles tightened in the pillow as the quarterback handed it off to the running back, who was promptly slammed into the ground behind the line of scrimmage. "We're gonna win," he repeated.  

The two teams lined up in front of one another and then the quarterback dropped back for a pass into the end zone. He hooked up with his receiver and the stadium exploded with noise as the score jumped in Sam's team's favor.  

Sam went very still for a moment as if he couldn't quite believe what had just happened, then he turned and beamed at Steve. God, he had a beautiful smile. It illuminated his whole face, a whole room practically. 

He pulled off his hat and smacked Steve's arm with it. "My lucky hat came through!"  

"You'd think they'd pay you a small sliver of their earnings since you contributed so heavily to their victory," Steve teased.  

"Now you got jokes," Sam said. "Mr. I-Have-No-Sense-of-Humor-and-Sam-Is-Making-Fun-of-Me of twenty minutes ago." 

Steve shrugged, oddly relaxed now that they were in this head-on. "Your flirting feels a lot like mockery, Sam." 

"No, you're just an incredibly oblivious human. I'd say it was being born a thousand years ago, but Bucky is nowhere near as obtuse as you." 

"Is this still flirting?" Steve asked, his cheeks starting to hurt a little from smiling. "Because it feels a lot like you're just insulting me some more." 

"I _would_ say 'if I was flirting with you, you'd know it', but _you_ probably wouldn't." Sam pushed Steve's shoulder playfully. "I could be in the middle of giving you the best blowjob of your life and you'd still be wondering if I liked you." 

Steve's mind painted a very vivid picture very quickly that he had to set aside to say something coherent. "You can give blowjobs and not like the person." 

Sam shrugged. "It wouldn't be my best work. It's always better when there's that spark." He dragged his fingertips very gently across the inside of Steve's forearm, so the hairs stood up and Steve's breathing got a little ragged in his chest. "I wouldn't want to make lots of eye contact with you, see what I was doing to you while I got you off, if I didn't like you. And that's the secret to really mind-altering blow job. The eye contact. If I didn't like you, I wouldn't tease you, drag it out until you begged." 

"Sam," Steve breathed.  

Sam pulled his hand away and muted the post-game show that had started up on the television. "You were saying earlier," he said, calmly, conversationally "how you were sorry it had taken you so long."  

Steve nodded, his thoughts being pulled apart like cotton candy. "Yeah, something like that."  

"Well," Sam said, grinning. "You still haven't done anyth--" 

But Sam didn't finish his sentence because Steve grabbed a fistful of his Henley and hauled Sam forward for a kiss that was years in the making.  

And kissing Sam was like biting into a chocolate chip cookie and hitting half a dozen oozing, gooey chocolate chips at once. It was pumpkin bread that was moist and dense and savory. It was an apple pie's flaky crust that made you think of home and promise and hope. It was every perfect pastry Steve had ever made. Sam's mouth was warm and sweet and honestly, Sam couldn't possibly oversell how good of a kisser he was. Even reciprocating a surprise kiss, he was good and the way he was holding on to Steve like he was going to fly away if he didn't—God, Steve could relate. Steve felt light as a skittering leaf, he felt as full as a ripe apple seconds from falling off the tree. He felt like the cool, exhilarating breeze on a dark night that carried mystery and adventure on its tails. He didn't want to stop kissing Sam to breathe, to eat, to do any other thing, because none of that could be half so important, half so interesting, half so lovely. 

But even superpowered lungs came to the end of their capacity, and Steve had to breathe. But he buried his face in the crook of Sam's neck to do it, right where Sam smelled the most like Sam and not like his cologne or toothpaste or laundry detergent. Steve nipped at the skin there and Sam's fingers tightened on his shoulder. 

Steve grinned. "I think," he said, pressing a kiss to the jut of Sam's collar bone, "I think I was supposed to make sweet, sweet love to you, too." He cupped Sam's chin and tilted his face so he could look into his clear brown eyes. Which were no different from an hour ago, but Steve finally understood what he was seeing, what Sam had been saying all along. Because Sam did that. He said exactly what he meant in a way that took Steve's breath away. And now Steve finally understood.  

Sam smiled slow and sly. "On the kitchen floor, if I recall." 

"Is that negotiable?" Steve asked. He sucked at the soft, warm skin over Sam's Adam's apple. 

"I think I can be convinced of other locations," Sam said breathily. 

Steve smiled. "No games, Sam. No shit. I like you. A lot."

"This is my favorite part," Sam said, his eyes shining like stars in an October night sky. 

**Author's Note:**

> It's October, y'all. My favorite month of the year. Time for tea drinking; cold, rainy days; wearing my Batman snuggie; perfect football games; and general coziness. And more Samsteve, because the world needs more Samsteve.
> 
> Unexpected sequel [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8273291)


End file.
